Pure Soul
by Ruaki
Summary: (Noel/Hope) He was not meant for her son.


_**Mmm, I wanted to explore Noel and Hope's relationship from the view of Hope's mother. Fandom likes to view Nora as the perfect epitome of motherhood, who committed the ultimate sacrifice for her son, but I feel that's a bit of a naive view to have for her. As we become adults, we're able to see our parents as the flawed human beings they are, who often try their best for their circumstances and sometimes they do screw up and it affects us. But they're human with the same fears and worries and passions as their children; they can be noble but they can be ugly too. Becoming a parent doesn't magically make you a saint and it's a learning experience like all things in life.**_

_**I think Nora's the same way. We only saw her as a lovely mother, but I wonder how much of that was really just Hope's own eyes.**_

_**Modern!AU, simply just to get rid of unnecessary baggage. I just wanted a character exploration and not have to deal with a lot of canonical backstory.**_

* * *

"Are you nervous?"

"A little worried I might screw up, yeah."

Nora glanced up from adjusting his tie and he flashed her a grin. There was no trace of apprehension in the gesture, but the corners of his eyes were tight.

She patted his chest to reassure him; he was tense under her hand. "I promise no one will laugh if you do."

"I don't want to ruin things for him," he said, and she fought back a smile, because she knew Hope would be the first to jump to his defense.

Nora patted him again and stepped back, looking him over. The tuxedo was perfectly tailored but seemed ill-fitting on his tall frame. Maybe it was because the suit sought to contain his spirit in neat, clean edges, and Noel was anything but in-the-box. He appeared awkward and regal, a little lost prince.

"Do I pass?"

"You don't look like yourself," she said honestly and the corners of his mouth lifted in wry agreement. "And I don't mean only the clothes."

"Oh." Noel rubbed the back of his neck, tilting his head away. "Just, it'll be official soon…"

"'It'?"

But he just pressed his lips tightly together at her question, gaze shrinking to the floor.

It took her moment, confused as she was by Noel's sudden bout of cold feet, for her to understand that he wasn't referring to getting married.

He had been drifting for a long time but now he was settling home.

And it would be 'official' for her too, wouldn't it? A mother-in-law.

Of course, it was just a title based off a piece of paper issued by the government. Nothing would really change. Noel wouldn't magically become a son of hers; she wouldn't magically become the mother he never had.

They were just two people sharing a connection through the same person, whom they both loved.

Her son.

Hope had always been a reticent boy growing up; he was awkward around strangers and shy around acquaintances. He didn't have many friends but he had never seemed lonely.

"All I need is you and Dad," he had told her at ten years old. "No one else matters."

Part of that was her fault. She had suffered two miscarriages before conceiving Hope, and even then, her pregnancy had been riddled with so many complications that she lived in daily fear of losing him as well. But he had survived, born one cool autumn morning before the dawn, only a week before he was due. Hope was her little miracle, and because of that, she smothered him, afraid to even relinquish him for a moment. Her identity revolved around being "Hope's Mother."

As Hope grew older, she began to relax her hold as it became apparent he wasn't going to suddenly leave her. But by then, it was a little too late. He was a bright boy, perceptive and generous, but something about him was emotionally stunted. He sought too hard to please everyone and he punished himself harshly for the smallest mistakes. He was empathetic, but kept his true self distant, the self that wasn't perfect, and it made him seem too much like a porcelain doll.

Hope was Mama's Little Boy, and he never wanted to disappoint her.

Part of her was pleased, because she was still Hope's Mother—it had been her identity for so long that she had no idea how to let it go. And as Hope grew into an adult—popular, handsome, smart, successful, (_perfect_)—he still remained her Little Boy who never did anything wrong, who never made a mistake, who never did anything uncouth. People complimented her on how well she had raised her son, and how wonderful he was, and part of her was pleased, even as a part of her stared at this beautiful doll and wondered where Hope really was inside. But it was a microscopic part, a part too afraid to speak up, afraid she'd lose him if she asked the wrong question.

The day he visited and shyly (seeking approval) told her he was seeing someone changed everything.

Nora had always believed her son would settle with someone who was his intellectual and social equal. She had prepared herself to accept someone into her life who was perfect like her son: to share family dinners which felt more like formal business meetings, to send perfunctory, impersonal birthday gifts to, to hold polite conversations where no one raised their voice or disagreed.

She had not been prepared for Noel, when she finally met him.

He was nothing like she had imagined from Hope's embarrassed, evasive answers to her questions. For one thing, he was far younger than she expected. He was also a burst of energy that she was not used to; not loud or abrasive, but confident and alert. Engaging. _Warm_. And something about that energy suffused into her son, standing next to him; his face was still its usual calm expression, but his eyes were bright. Hope was smitten, infatuated.

She hated Noel instantly. He was as different from her son as night to day: rumpled, fluid, forthright, casual. He was not _meant _for her son. She couldn't understand what her son saw in him.

Ill-will clogged her stomach during that dinner with Noel and she picked at her food as her husband directed the flow of conversation around the table. Her ears perked up as Bart asked Noel what he did for a living or if he was still in school; perhaps this was the reason her son was taken with this strange young man?

Noel simply said, "I work odd jobs here and there. I'm a bit of drifter."

"I don't like him," Nora told her husband after Noel and Hope had left. "That vagrant is just using our son for his money. Once he's bored, he'll break Hope's heart and dump him to the side. I don't know what our son is thinking. I don't approve of this."

"It's not your place to approve or disapprove what Hope does with his life," Bart said mildly and it irritated her because she knew it was true.

But it wasn't just the lack of a job which made her dislike Noel. She knew he was hiding something. He was skillful at turning conversation topics about himself back onto others, showing a genuine interest in Bart and Nora but a complete disinterest in talking about himself. It was suspicious and confirmed her fears that Noel was nothing more than an opportunist, leeching her son dry. She imagined dark secrets and evil motives lurking behind Noel's friendly facade.

"It's just how he is," Hope told her when she tried to (make her son see reason) bring it to his attention. "I don't even believe he's aware he's doing it. Don't take it to heart, Mom."

It shocked her to hear her son dismissing her concerns like that. He had always agreed with anything she said. She found she couldn't reply.

The dinners and visits continued into weeks and she couldn't say she warmed up to Noel. But for the sake of her son, she maintained a cool cordiality with him.

"Your mom taught you well," she told him one night, as he helped her (not at her request, oh no, but he had been so eager in his offer that it would've been impolite for her to refuse) garnish appetizers for dinner. The compliment came out against her will, but Noel showed more knowledge about the kitchen than both her son and husband combined.

"Actually, my mom died when I was born," he said and he said it in a way which reminded Nora of her son. "But my grandmother taught me a bit before she passed."

An invisible hand slapped Nora sharply across the face; she stared at Noel's back as he worked (he didn't even glance up, as if it was unimportant in the grand scheme of things). She felt a tangible, choking empathy for the dead mother Noel didn't know, remembering her own difficulty carrying Hope to term, of how at one point, during a bout of emotional instability, she had made Bart swear that if it came down to her life or their child's, he would choose the latter.

The empathy cleared her sight and she realized that Noel was like her son. He too gave himself to others, but there was a part of him he kept distant and guarded. (_"I don't even believe he's aware he's doing it."_) Yes, Hope had seen it: Hope who understood people so well, her son who suffered from the exact same affliction.

The epiphany didn't make her dislike of Noel turn a 180, but she looked at him differently afterwards. The little things she disapproved of—dropping out of school, wandering from place to place, the lack of financial stability, the unwillingness to talk about himself—it made some sense now.

But she still didn't like him. He just wasn't _meant _for Hope, her perfect son, who survived just as Noel did, but didn't turn into such a failure. Her Little Boy.

"I thought you don't like turnips," Noel said to Hope one night at the table, and her son froze in mid-bite.

Nora stared at her son in surprise; he had never expressed any type of dietary dislike, always eating everything she served him without complaint.

But she had never noticed, had she? Whether he had enjoyed what he had eaten or simply did it to please her, a dutiful son.

Hope swallowed the turnips (hurriedly, with difficulty, she noted with hawk-like vision). "I only enjoy the ones my mother makes."

"Yeah, they are pretty good," and Noel smiled at Nora.

She wanted to scream at him.

(What are you doing to my Little Boy? I am his mother! I am Hope's Mother! You are not _meant _for him!)

She wanted to blame him.

But it was really her fault.

Months passed and Hope was changing.

Now that she was aware of all the little lies Hope had cultivated for her throughout his life, she could see the changes like the sun traversing a clear sky: slow but steady, blinding her as it arced over her world. She couldn't look away, even as it hurt, because her son was slowly metamorphing from a doll into … into what?

She didn't know. However, she wouldn't look away.

"That blockhead made a bet that he could eat twenty hot dogs faster than anyone, so he's home nursing the results of his idiocy right now," Hope told them one evening when he showed up alone for a family dinner. He was irritated. A slight line creased the skin between his fine brows and his eyes flashed with heat. Even his language lost its careful enunciated nuance, slipping into a colloquial she hadn't heard from him since middle school.

She had never seen him irritated. Her son never allowed himself to be irritated: it was crass to lose one's temper, it was inconsiderate to be annoyed by people. It wasn't perfect.

"Did he win?" Bart asked and Nora was too shocked by Hope's irritation to become upset that her husband was encouraging any discussion about Noel. (Despite his initial misgivings, Bart had quickly grown to like Noel. Maybe he had seen more clearly what she was only now beginning to understand.)

Hope huffed, lips twisting into a childish sulk, and Nora was fascinated. "Yes. It made him even more insufferable because I can't properly gloat about his foolish stunt. He does send his apologies."

"Well, it has been a while since it was the three of us," Bart said and her Little Boy immediately swallowed up this new, strange Hope. Dinner changed into a quiet, formal, business-like affair.

Nora never before considered that maybe this wasn't normal. That maybe their family was insular, stagnant, lacking.

(That night, she made love to Bart with a passion she hadn't shown since they were newlyweds. She knew he had been shocked, though not unpleased, but he said nothing about her sudden need as she clung to him afterwards.)

"Mrs. Estheim," Noel said to her weeks later as he helped her with dinner and she cut him off.

"Nora." It came out clipped in her nervousness, like a command, and she regretted how harsh it sounded.

He blinked, and a medley of emotions rippled across his face. She didn't have her son's gift for reading people, but she caught the confusion loud and clear. "Huh?"

"Call me Nora."

He shook his head. "It feels weird to do that." (Blunt. Honest. Her son would've done what she asked. Or he would've lied to spare her embarrassment if he couldn't.)

She didn't expect that to hurt (her son had never hurt her); that this young man would be dating Hope for nearly a year and it was 'weird' for him to call her something familiar.

Nora opened cupboard doors, not really searching for anything—she just wanted to avoid looking at Noel. "Maybe someday it won't be." Her voice quavered and dropped low at the final syllables.

"I think I'd like that," he replied after a moment of silence and she turned her head to see him smiling faintly at her, a shy, boyish pull of his lips.

Despite herself, she smiled back.

"Mom, do you like Noel?" Hope asked her one day as they went out for lunch, a mother-son outing.

The question caught her off guard. She still had a lot of complicated emotions about Noel. Should she lie?

Hope was watching at her with guarded eyes, hands folded neatly across the table. But she could hear the slight thud-thud of one of his legs jittering as his knee hit the underside of the table, a nervous gesture that he wouldn't have ever dared show anyone, even her.

No, she couldn't lie. There were too many lies between them, foolish white lies built to protect, and now that she had seen them for what they were, she couldn't continue with this farce. "I don't know."

"I see." Hope's slim fingers twisted together on the table and his gaze lowered. He looked so small in his chair. "I've disappointed you."

She didn't expect that to hurt, because her son had never hurt her, and yet she hurt him, so many times, without meaning, without purpose. Something bubbled up at the back of her throat, burning like bile. She seized Hope's hands, squeezing them painfully tight, and tears pricked at her eyes.

"You have never, _ever _been a disappointment to me, Hope. You can never be. I'm so proud of you and that will never change. You are who you are. Even when you make a bad decision, you won't disappoint me."

"So you consider Noel a bad decision?"

Did she mean for her words to passively voice her doubts about Noel? She had only wanted to tell Hope that he didn't have to be perfect, that he could make mistakes and behave like any other human being. Her perfect son… yes, she believed he had made a bad decision. But maybe Hope was benefitting from it.

"What I think isn't important, Hope. Do you think you made a bad decision by being with Noel?"

"No." He didn't hesitate, lifting his eyes. "But… I don't want you to hate him."

"I don't hate him." She could say that with certainty. She no longer hated him. "But I don't love him. He's not family. He's…" And she paused, hesitating where Hope didn't. "Maybe someday. I don't know."

Hope nodded, but their food arrived and they said nothing more about the matter.

"Thank you," Noel said to her on Christmas Eve, holding the blue scarf delicately in his hands. His fingers kneaded the soft yarn and he looked torn between smiling or crying.

"You're welcome," she replied, a little flustered by Noel's sincere gratitude. The scarf had been an impulse gift; nothing expensive, just an afterthought as she had passed a rack while shopping for other gifts. The jewel blue had caught her eye; it reminded her inexplicably of Noel since he favored wearing blue. Without thinking, she had purchased it.

Noel wrapped the scarf around his neck, tugging it up to nuzzle his face against it. His eyes curved into a smile and he laughed, leaning in toward Hope to tickle an end against his cheek. Hope smiled at him, the unreserved smile he used more often, and Nora watched the two with a feeling she couldn't name.

Hope caught her eye and he mouthed 'thank you, Mom.'

"Nora!" she heard someone call from across the plaza months later. She glanced around curiously before spotting Noel waving an arm at her from over the crowd. Even from where she was, she could see his bright grin.

They had lunch together and it had been a long time since she had laughed like that with anyone who wasn't Bart or Hope.

"Next time, could you please wait until you return home?" she scolded the two one night after Bart and she walked in on them having a little impromptu escapade.

(Bart, very sensibly, had just turned right back around without a word, but Nora couldn't resist a little teasing after seeing their abashed faces, like little boys with their hands in the cookie jar.)

Unfortunately, this wasn't the first (or last) time she'd have the misfortune of interrupting their private moments.

"We had an argument," Hope mumbled to her over the phone in the unholy hours between night and day. His voice was hoarse. "It's my fault."

Months ago she would've been elated, driving over to her son's flat to comfort him and encourage him to move on.

"Sometimes it'll be your fault, and sometimes it'll be his," she said instead. "What matters is how you take responsibility for it." She paused and it hurt her to say what followed. "I'm not the one you should be talking to."

"I don't think he'll forgive me, Mom…"

"Why not?"

"I really hurt him."

"That means he loves you."

(The people you love always hurt you the most, Hope, because they're the ones we show our true selves to.)

"Mom, Noel and I have been discussing marriage," Hope told her, and it was three years now.

"I see," she said and took a sip of her coffee. It didn't surprise her. And she felt no dismay.

She had come to accept that she had lost her Little Boy. She had buried him deep in her heart without ceremony. That politely cool face that she loved she could no longer clearly remember, but she felt no loss and she didn't mourn. The young man with the lively green eyes which so easily expressed a gamut of his feelings—joy, anger, kindness, irritation, weakness, and strength—overshadowed the doll she had raised. What she gained was so much more than what she had lost. She felt closer to Hope now. Secure.

"It's about time," she added with a faint smirk.

Hope flushed and coughed.

The wedding was planned for the following spring, a modest affair involving close friends and family before a magistrate and then a reception to finish it off.

"Do you think things are going to change because it's 'official'?" she asked Noel. "Are you hoping they'll change?"

He looked at her then, solemn. "I don't want them to change."

"But things have changed so much because of you." (_He_ changed so much because of you. I changed. And I know you have too.) "What gives you the right to say that?"

"The fact that things changed because of me." And for a moment, she saw it there, the things he hid from her behind his friendliness; that he knew her doubts and fears about him, and she saw too, that he felt the same way about her.

"Then see it through to the end." She was angry, but not at Noel. "See it through until, official or not, I accept that you are my family and my son, and that you accept I am your family and your mother."

(I wouldn't ever want to go back to that, Noel. None of us do. Like it or not, you're a part of us now. And you made us a part of you. Don't you dare run away now.)

She told herself she wouldn't cry; she didn't cry when she saw Hope just minutes earlier, radiant and regal, glowing with his embraced humanity. He still retained an image of perfection, but it was perfect because there were flaws, like small bubbles in glass, which didn't hinder the light shining inside. She was so proud of him, so happy for him, and both squeezed her heart in painful ways. Yet she didn't cry.

However the tears came now, bubbling up like fire, and it was because this was the final death throes of Hope's Mother, that fragile identity shredding like wet paper. Now she could just be Nora, who happened to be the mother of Hope. She choked on sobs and then Noel was holding her tight as she smeared her tears and makeup over his immaculate tuxedo.

Maybe someday he'd forgive her for all the wrongs she committed against him. Maybe someday he'd open up, someday she'd hear him call her Mom, someday she could brag about her two beautiful sons to her friends.

Maybe someday it wouldn't be weird, and Nora would've liked that.


End file.
